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The last word on a great leader
By Jeremy | August 14, 2005
"He was not a brilliant strategist or tactician, not a gifted orator, not an intellectual. At several crucial moments he had shown marked indecision. He had made serious mistakes in judgment. But experience had been his greatest teacher from boyhood, and in this his greatest test, he learned steadily from experience. Above all, [George] Washington never forgot what was at stake and he never gave up." (1776, p. 293, emphasis mine.)
Abigail Adams (John's wife) wrote of Washington:
"I am apt to think that our later misfortunes have called out the hidden excellencies of our commander-in-chief. ... 'Affliction is the good man's shining time.'" (Id. at 291, quoting English poet Edward Young.)
Regarding the young leaders Washington empowered at the beginning of the war, McCullough writes:
"Greene and Knox, the two young untried New Englanders Washington had singled out as the beginning as the best of the 'raw material' he had to work with, had both shown true greatness and stayed in the fight to the finish." (Id. at 293) Greene in particular was regarded as "the most brilliant American field commander of the war," Washington's handpicked successor if anything happened to him during battle. (Ibid.)
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